Posts Tagged ‘PDTi’

It was easy to spot the big theme’s at DAC this year. This was the “Year of ESL” (again). The state of the economy and the future of EDA was a constant backdrop. Analog design was finally more than just Cadence Virtuoso. And social media challenged traditional media.

It was harder to spot the themes that were not front and center, that were not spotlighted by the industry beacons, that were not reported by press or bloggers. Still, there were important developments if you looked in the right places and noticed what was changing. At least one of those themes came across to me loud and clear. This was the year that the clouds started forming over EDA.

If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know I’m not talking about the weather or some metaphor for the health of the EDA industry. You know I am talking about cloud computing, which moved from crazy idea of deluded bloggers to solidly in the early adopter category. Though this technology is still “left of chasm”, many companies were talking about sticking their toes in the waters of cloud computing and some even had specific plans to jump in. Of note:

Univa UD - Offering a “hybrid cloud” approach to combine on premise hardware and public cloud resources. Many view this as the first step into the cloud since it is incremental to existing on premise hardware.

Imera Systems - Offering a product called EDA Remote Debug that enables an EDA company to place a debug version of their software on a customer’s site in order to debug a tool issue. This reduces the need to send an AE on site or to have the customer package up a testcase.

R Systems - A spinoff from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (best known for Telnet and Mosaic), they were wandering the floor pitching their own high performance computing resources (that they steadfastly insisted were “not a cloud”) available remotely or brought to your site to increase your computing capacity.

Cadence - One of the first (after PDTi) to have an official Hosted Design Solutions offering, they host their software and your data in a secure datacenter and are looking at the cloud as well for the future.

Before I cover Xuropa, I need to take a brief digression. You see, July 27th was not just the first day of DAC. It was also my first official day working for Xuropa as one of my clients. I’ll be doing social media consulting (blogging, tweeting, other online social community stuff) and also helping their customers get their tools on the Xuropa platform. This is very exciting for me, something I’ll blog about specifically on the Xuropa Blog and also here. In the meantime, under full disclosure, you’ve now been told. You can factor in the appropriate amount of skepticism to what I have to say about cloud computing, hosted design, Software-as-a-Service and Xuropa.

Xuropa - Offering to EDA companies and IP providers the ability to create secure online labs in the cloud for current and prospective customers to test drive a tool, do tool training, etc. They also have plans to make the tools available for “real work”.

These companies and technologies are very exciting on their own. Still, the cloud computing market is very new and there is a lot of churn so it is very difficult to know what will survive or become the standard. Perhaps something not even on this list will emerge.

Even though the technology side is cloudy (pun intended), the factors driving companies to consider using the cloud are very clear. They all seem to come down to one economic requirement. Doing more with less. Whenever I speak to people about cloud computing (and I do that a lot) they always seem to “get it” when I speak in terms of doing more with less. Here are some examples:

I spoke to an IT person from a large fabless semiconductor company that is looking at cloud computing as a way to access more IT resources with less of an on premise hardware datacenter.

Cadence told me that their Hosted Design Solutions are specifically targeted at smaller companies that want to be able to access a complete EDA design environment (hardware, software, IT resources) without making any long-term commitment to the infrastructure.

EDA and IP companies of all sizes are looking to reduce the cost of customer support while providing more immediate and accessible service.

EDA and IP companies are looking to go global (e.g. US companies into Europe and Asia) without hiring a full on sales and support team.

Everyone is trying to reduce their travel budgets.

Naysayers point out that we’ve seen this trend before. EDA companies tried to put their tools in datacenters. There were Application Service Providers trying to sell Software-as-a-Service. These attempts failed or the companies moved into other offerings. And so they ask (rightly) “what is different now?”

There is certainly a lot of new technology (as you see above) that help to make this all more secure and convenient than it was in the past. We live in a time of cheap computing and storage and ubiquitous internet access which makes this all so much more affordable and accessible than before. And huge low cost commodity hardware data centers like those at Amazon and Google never existed before now. But just because all this technology exists so that it can be done, doesn’t mean it will be done.

What is different is the economic imperative to do more with less. That is why this will happen. If cloud computing did not exist, we’d have to invent it.

The SaaS and Cloud Computing Roundtable will be held from 6:30 - 8:00 pm on Wed Feb 25th in the Monterey/Carmel rooms at the San Jose Doubletree Hotel. This is immediately following the DVCon reception down the hall, so grab a drink and a bite and then wander on over.

SaaS and Cloud Computing are 2 of the hottest trends in the Information Technology and software industries. Some EDA companies have already put their toes in the water. This roundtable will explore the following question: Are they trailblazing the future of the industry or are they chasing an empty fad?

The format will consist of 5 brief (< 10 minute) presentations from people involved in various perspectives in SaaS and cloud computing for EDA:

I’m greatly looking forward to this event, especially since I get to collaborate with such a high-powered team and I have no idea what to expect. I truly believe that this could be one of the more interesting events at DVCon this year.

Last, on the topic of Software-as-a-Service for EDA, I wanted to point out a new demo on PDTi’s SpectaReg product. The demo is a little stiff, especially the pre-written copy. I’d rather hear the developer and a user speak honestly and passionately about why this is a cool product. But the fact that Jeremy Ralph is offering this product as SaaS makes him a kindred spirit, so I’ll cut him some slack. Good vibes!